Skip to content

Monday, Oct. 11, 2021

Does Canada have stronger COVID vaccine mandates for travelers than the US?

Lisa Freedland, Gigafact

yes

Canada has imposed stricter COVID-19 vaccine requirements for travelers than the U.S.

While the U.S. requires all visitors to the U.S. to have tested negative for COVID-19 no more than three days before their flights, Canada only admits fully-vaccinated foreign visitors. Canada has also announced that by the end of October it will require that anyone traveling by commercial airline, interprovincial train or cruise ship be fully vaccinated as well. The U.S. has no such mandate.

Both countries have announced policies requiring their federal employees to be vaccinated. The Biden administration is also developing requirements covering businesses with more than 100 employees.

As of Oct. 9, the Centers for Disease Control says that 56.4% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated. As of Oct. 2, Canada's official count says 71.1% of its population is fully vaccinated.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.